


Unapologetic

by alteringviews



Series: The One Who Protects [1]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-18 02:38:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9362513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alteringviews/pseuds/alteringviews
Summary: aka The Reputation of Miss Martha JonesAfter joining UNIT Martha receives more than a few cold stares and cold shoulders from some of the Doctor's associates. These are her thoughts after learning why.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Because Shakespeare's "Dark Lady" needs more love.

No one dared to call me a companion. I was an abomination. Filthy, disgusting, and hideous to the eyes. Eyes that judged and turned hard at the mere mention of my name. Gazes that stared through me as if I was nothing but air, more transparent than their thoughts, and yet also managed to hold me in place in a room as if nails had pierced my flesh rendering me immobile.

I was a curse to the institution. A stain on an otherwise pristine record. Like a jagged, seemingly pulsing scar running diagonally across the most perfect face anyone had ever seen. It was impossible to cover with hair. It was something meant to be seen, something that could not be hidden. It was obvious as obvious as it was damning. For how had one so beautiful and pure received such pain, encountered such violence, been left with a memory of how dirty the world could be. How had one as unimportant as I hurt one as important as he?

I was a girl. A foolish girl. A girl who had tried to make the infallible man imperfect. Or in the view of many had stood against a man who could not be questioned and would be punished for this grave mistake. For a wound, I had inflicted without realizing. For holding myself and my health above his. I was the girl who had taken the beliefs of the institution I was a member of, if only purely by association and stomped them in the dust. Maybe they viewed it differently. Maybe what they saw wasn't shunning or even avoidance or the right to put myself above all else, but something even more unacceptable. Maybe they saw me as being purely fanciful. The girl who violated the holiness of all space and time with her whimsy.

I was someone who had turned away from space and time. The breathtaking majesty of it all. The terrifying yet riveting knowledge of how little one was, how small a piece one individual played in the universe. The expanse of things left unexplored I chose not to care for. I left without looking back at the man who had transversed it all. Seen wonders people couldn't dream of and children couldn't imagine. Fought with all manner of creature to protect the Earth and the human race. And if I was a lesser person I too would start to think myself a foolish person. For shouldn't a savior be praised not shunned, loved not left, cared for not forsaken. But I was always one for the unthinkable and always one to survive. So contrary to the norm I, the woman in love with the hero, left his side.

Was I wrong to turn my back on that which only hurt me? Even in all of love's blindness I couldn't ignore or unsee the treatment I received. The more than casual brush-offs. The never-ending comparisons to someone who no matter if the person that tried was a duplicate of himself they too would fall short of the ideal. As I had. So great was the pedestal he made for that person that I doubt even she could match it. It would have been folly to inform him of the fact. Too wrapped up in his depression, in loss, in losing again and not being able to stop it. He would never have been able to acknowledge how ridiculous his obsession was. He would never be able to distance himself from his rose-colored memories of her. It would have been even more folly to stay. To be by his side, but destined to always be looked over and forgotten. I could not be second best to an idea. I could not stay. For to stay with him, to explore with him would surely have been the death of me.

Leaving was my only choice. The right choice. No matter how great the hero was or still is, I was not a woman drawn to misery. Nor was I a woman keen to sit idly by watching my life disappear in moments of disappointment. I was not a woman content to deal with disdain when I deserved praise. I was a woman, even at that time, that dealt in actions, not words. Worthy of more than empty words and eyes, capable of going to unprecedented lengths, stronger than the hero himself, an unbreakable, remarkable forgotten savior. Or were you thinking of me as a mere side attraction in this story rather than a part of the main event? Were you waiting for the wrong I committed to deserve the constant impenetrable silence? The gravest sin I committed was leaving him. The tale that painted me as a stain on the world was only told from the viewpoints of outsiders looking in at something they couldn't possibly understand. But of course, they wouldn’t fathom anything else.

Most forgot that a hero controlled by his emotions was just a man, after all, a hateful and spiteful one. A cruel man for he did not know, perhaps did not care how cruel he was so wrapped in his own pain was he. It was an almost impossible wish to expect him, a man in pain not to lash out at the person closest to him. Not to inflict hurt on those around him. Many individuals cause pain to those who love them the most. Even a saint was once a sinner. The mightiest had fallen at least once in their lives and survival didn't always go to the fittest. Was I the only one that understood nothing was written in stone? Just because something had been there was no guarantee it would continue to exist and in the same way.

Yes, the man I met was a great man. A man that mere words spoken in a tongue so simple could hardly begin to describe. But he was not the man that most of his associates knew him to be when I traveled with him. When we existed together in the same time and space he was cold beyond reason. As harsh and unforgiving as the iceberg that broke the titanic in half plunging hundreds of people to their deaths. If there was a barrier that his other companions had to break through, if there was a something a companion could do to make lifeless eyes light up...I had scaled mountains, walked deserts, swam the black sea, died a thousand deaths trying to arrive at the barrier, trying to give life only to finally reach a door that could only be opened by someone else. How frustrating my time was trying to help him. How foolish I was to fall in love with a heartless man, a soulless man, a helpless one.

He wanted to burn and maybe I was mistaken when I put my life on the line to stop it. But had he self-destructed would I have not still been the one to blame? If there was blame to be laid would it not be at my feet. On my shoulders. Pressing me down into nothing, into nonexistence. If stones were to be thrown would they not be aimed at his last or latest travel companion. For the man who cannot hold blame, someone must take the fall. Someone must play the scapegoat. There was no way for me to win, no way to stop myself from becoming a sacrifice, no way to come out unscathed so I chose the fire of my own making instead of the pyre they would have built for me.

And by doing so had become more disposable than any other threat he had faced. More horrible than a Cyberman, crueler than a Dalek, as insidious as the Family of Blood and almost as silly as stone angels forcing you to live to death. A mere evil to be eradicated or thrust away never to appear before him again. How quickly one can change from friend to foe I had experienced first hand. Though it was not something to be taken lightly I had long since embraced it. Whether it was the day I stepped out of his shifting home and onto the earth, solid ground unmoving beneath my feet or when it became obvious to me I was going to have to leave. I chose my path without regret and I knew I would follow it the same.


End file.
